Lib at Large: At 77, hippie icon Wavy Gravy looks back at a lifetime of doing good

AS HE APPROACHES his 77th birthday, counterculture icon Wavy Gravy has one fervent hope: To stick around long enough to emcee the 50th anniversary of Woodstock.

That will be in 2019, when he'll be 84. "It's not that long," he insists. "It's only seven years."

At the original Woodstock, the mega 1969 rock festival that's become a touchstone of the peace and love generation, he was still known as Hugh Romney, his given name, changing it to Wavy Gravy after B.B. King called him that at a music festival later that same year.

At Woodstock, the Hog Farm commune he co-founded handled security, calling themselves the Please Force ("will you please stand back from the stage," etc.) and ran a free kitchen, ladling hot food to legions of muddy, wet hippie kids.

Along with his warnings to stay away from the brown acid, he became famous for announcing from the stage: "What we have in mind is breakfast in bed for 400,000," a quote that reached a mass audience through the "Woodstock" movie, cementing his place in rock history.

Wavy took part in the 20th and 40th Woodstock anniversary events, and holds the distinction of being the only act on the bill of all three festivals. Two of his jumpsuits are in the Woodstock Museum.

"All I want to do is make it to the 50th," he says. "They are gonna go crazy."

He may or may not discuss Woodstock in his one-clown show, "Hippy Icon, Flower Geezer & Temple of Accumulated Error: Stories by Wavy Gravy," coming to the San Geronimo Community Center on April 19.

In his seat-of-the pants reminiscences, he's been known to riff like a tie-dye Zelig on the many famous characters he's known in his life, everyone from Bob Dylan and Lenny Bruce to Bill Graham, Albert Einstein and Tiny Tim. In his review of the show in the San Francisco Chronicle, Rob Hurwitt described the evening as "anecdotes from a life lived full tilt."

"I can perform an hour and a half show, and not everyone can do that," Wavy says. "But then I've got a lot to draw from. And it's all oral history. I'm not into a joke telling thing."

Age may have slowed down the man the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir calls "a saint in a clown's suit." But not much. Deep into his 70s, he continues to do the good work that was documented in the acclaimed 2009 film about him, "Saint Misbehavin'."

Almost everything he does is in support of his two main causes, one being Camp Winnarainbow, the children's circus and performing arts camp in Mendocino County that he founded with Janahara, his wife of 47 years.

"We're always struggling to raise funds so that we can have a decent amount of kids from economically-challenged parents attend camp," he says, mentioning a May 12 benefit concert by longtime supporter Jackson Browne. (Details at www.campwinnarainbow.org)

His other focus is the Seva Foundation, the international health organization for the poor he started in 1978 with Ram Das and Mill Valley physician Larry Brilliant.

Seva is best known for the cataract operations that have restored the eyesight of three million people in Cambodia, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Nepal and Tibet. Wavy calls this work "keeping blind people from bumping into stuff."

He no longer has a Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor named after him, referring to himself as "a former frozen dessert." That deal was a lucrative benefit for Seva. But he's excited about a new partnership with Toms Shoes, the company that gives a pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair it sells. Toms now offers a line of sunglasses that are being marketed with the same one-for-one formula, this time benefiting Seva.

"For every pair of these stylish Italian sunglasses they sell, Seva is able to do a cataract operation in the third world," Wavy explains. "They have bounced us decidedly into the black."

Paul Krassner once described Wavy as "the illegitimate son of Harpo Marx and Mother Teresa." And the Village Voice called him "one of the better people on earth," saying "he makes a big a fool of himself as is necessary to make a wiser man of you."

He has no idea how big a fool he'll make of himself at the San Geronimo Community Center. "I don't have a set list," is the way he puts it. Although his show is not recommended for kids under 15, it won't be just for aging hippies looking to relive their youth.

"His fan base is a lot more diverse than people expect," says the community center's Hannah Doress. "He's kept the values of the '60s alive by engaging new generations. What people love about him is his commitment to the causes he thinks are important. He's made them his life. And what's better than that?"